I’m writing this from where you can find me most nights, in the corner of Oscar’s bedroom, in the dark, waiting for him to sleep. These are the moments (hours sometimes), where I pray, think, write and often, to be honest, fall asleep myself.
People talk about death by a thousand papercuts – the idea that it isn’t one catastrophic wound that breaks you, but a thousand tiny ones that never quite stop stinging.
I think that’s what grief can be like for a parent of a child with additional needs.
People imagine the grief begins and perhaps ends with the diagnosis. Perhaps for some it does. But more often, it becomes a thousand papercuts.
There are ordinary moments that nobody else notices. A Mother’s Day craft that is no more sophisticated than their first one years earlier. A birthday that quietly reminds you another year has passed, and the words and skills hoped for still haven’t come.
The forms that ask about milestones or the paediatric report that bluntly states the gap in development. The events quietly exited because it has become overwhelming. And if I’m not careful the quiet fear of what adulthood might look like for him, for us.
Tiny moments.
Invisible moments.
Papercuts.
None of them are devastating on their own. But together, over years, they accumulate into a grief that few people see.
Not because you love your child any less. You celebrate every victory, no matter how small. You delight in who your child is. And yet, in the quiet moments, another papercut.
Scripture says that Jesus was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). He doesn’t stand at a distance from our quiet disappointments. He knows the grief no one else notices – the hidden grief, the recurring grief, the grief that arrives in ordinary moments.
He knows every papercut.
And one day, He promises something no milestone ever could: that He “will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).
There may be a thousand papercuts. But there are a thousand mercies too. Every quiet grief is met by a faithful God whose mercies are new every morning.
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed… his mercies are new every morning.”
Lamentations 3:22-23
Blue Skies & Lollipops 